| I love the new releases of what were once hopelessly obscure Taiwanese wuxia titles that recently came from the seemingly defunct Crash Cinema and the thankfully still-kicking Fusian. It's a fascinating look into the sort of entertainment that the "martial arts" genre provided before it was noticed in the West. The movies are often pretty dodgy, more melodramatic than action packed, and only occasionally good examples of the potential of the wuxia genre.
But what I've also noticed that not everybody cares about seeing what independant martial arts cinema was like in the period that's just slightly older than what many consider to be "old-school" (whatever that means). This is reflected in the disapointed reviews for movies like Absurd Brave and Whirlwind Knight. There's no difficulty in understanding why these movies would fail to meet the expecations of somebody hoping for blistering fight choreography and visual panache of the best martial arts films that came in the following decade.
But now that these films are available, and there's been plenty of time to become familiar with Fusian's releases, can we finally get past "this movie has no real fight choreography, therefore I cannot recommend it?" There's nothing inherently wrong with this point of view, but at this point, to complain about fight choreography or stagy direction or melodramatic scripting and acting is about as sensible as complaining about the picture and audio quality.
These movies are what they are, and should be taken for their own value, not compared to films released a decade later which targeted different audiences and had different artistic goals. | TN26476
9/27/2008 5:58 PM |
